The Breakdown: Will Torture Memo Authors Evade Justice?

The Breakdown: Will Torture Memo Authors Evade Justice?

The Breakdown: Will Torture Memo Authors Evade Justice?

In 2002, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, at the behest of the CIA and in conjunction with the White House, drafted a memo on acceptable standards of interrogation. Now the authors have been cleared of wrongdoing.

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email
The Breakdown

In 2002, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, at the behest of the CIA and in conjunction with the White House, drafted a memo on acceptable standards of interrogation. The OLC’s opinions, authored by then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and approved by his supervisor Jay Bybee, provided a legal framework for the widespread implementation of cruel and inhuman enhanced interrogation techniques used under the Bush Administration. Since the memo’s public release, human rights organizations, independent legal bodies and intelligence officials have all condemned the document and demanded professional sanctions for Yoo and Bybee. After five years of investigation, the Office of Professional Responsibility recently released a report effectively clearing Yoo and Bybee of misconduct. On this week’s The Breakdown, The Nation‘s DC Editor Christopher Hayes, with guest Marcy Wheeler from Firedoglake, discuss the layers of the OPR report and its implications.

Related Links

Marcy Wheeler’s blog, Empty Wheel.

Official text of the Bybee memo.

Documents from the Department of Justice relating to the OPR report.

Foreign Policy brief on OPR findings.

Editor’s Note: Starting this week, The Breakdown is being produced in partnership with ExplainThis.org, a new website devoted to explanatory journalism. Visitors to the site can post questions, which are sorted and ranked, and then answered by journalists. ExplainThis.org has set up a special page for The Breakdown, so you can now ask Christopher Hayes your questions via email, twitter or online–at ExplainThis.org/thebreakdown.

Support The Nation’s June Fundraising Campaign

With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.

As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Nation elevates progressive ideas, movements, and elected officials achieving real change across the country into the national conversation. At the same time, our journalists are exposing how crypto and AI-funded super PACs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to knock out candidates they oppose, reporting on the devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, and sounding the alarm on attempts by red states to quickly redraw electoral maps, disenfranchising Southern Black voters.

We can play this critical role because of support from readers like you. This June, we’re raising $20,000 to power The Nation’s independent journalism in the run-up to November’s immensely consequential elections.

It’s in our power to build a more just society, and your support at this critical moment brings us closer to that bold vision. I hope you’ll donate today.

Onward,

Katrina vanden Huevel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

Ad Policy
x